Roadside shrines are everywhere in Arizona, but this one has specific, painful meaning to the Walton family. Their son was killed at the site.

Greg Bryan / Arizona Daily Star

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Arizona consistently has one of the nation's highest rates of fatal hit-and-run crashes.

And some statistical evidence suggests the state's large number of illegal immigrants is one reason.

An Arizona Daily Star analysis of nearly 10,000 fatal crashes in the state from 1994 through 2004 found that drivers left the scene in 5.6 percent of the accidents. That's a higher rate of hit-and-runs than in any state except California.

Just in 2004, 77 people in Arizona died in hit-and-runs.

Over the past decade, half of Arizona's fatal hit-and-runs involved pedestrians — a trend mirrored nationwide. If a pedestrian or bicyclist is killed on an Arizona road, there's a one in five chance the driver will take off.

Determining why states vary on hit-and-run crashes is inherently difficult because many of those who flee are never caught.

Nationally and in Arizona, the federal government's fatal accident database contains no information on drivers in four out of 10 cases of hit-and-run. Even in the other 60 percent, nationality and immigration status of drivers are not reported.

But to many traffic safety experts and insurance industry officials, there is at least circumstantial evidence that people illegally in the country contribute to the hit-and-run problem.

The seven states with the highest rates of fatal hit-and-run crashes are also the seven states that have the most illegal immigrants, according to two think tanks. Both the Pew Hispanic Center and Center for Immigration Studies rank Arizona fifth and put its illegal immigrant population at about 500,000, or 9 percent of all state residents.

Arizona led the nation in another category that may be tied to illegal immigration: one in 12 drivers in fatal accidents had no license at all. New Mexico and Texas, two other border states, ranked second and third in that measure.

Arizona's high rates of unlicensed drivers and hit-and-run crashes are "joined at the hip," said Dave Willis, a senior research scientist at the Texas Transportation Institute who has studied traffic safety issues for 30 years.

"A lot of it is the Mexican border," Willis said.

Gustavo Soto, a supervisory agent with the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, said smugglers of illegal immigrants or illegal drugs often are involved in fatal hit-and-runs in this part of the state. "They're driving reckless, and they're driving in shoddy vehicles," Soto said.

But the agency doesn't track that type of incident, so he could not provide specific data.

Russell Ahr, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Phoenix office, said some data suggest that smugglers are using more vehicles to carry illegal immigrants in smaller groups. That may contribute to an increase in the number of crashes in which smugglers are involved, he said.

However, the seven states with the most hit-and-run crashes and illegal immigrants are also states with the vast majority of residents living in urban areas. Vehicle-pedestrian crashes — which account for about 60 percent of hit-and-run fatalities nationwide — are more common in cities.

And where information is known about drivers in Arizona fatal hit-and-runs, only 1.5 percent have Mexican licenses; 90 percent have Arizona licenses.

Drunken motorists who plow into pedestrians might not even realize they hit someone. Otherwise, it's likely that a hit-and-run driver made a conscious decision not to stick around.

Ahr said smugglers and illegal immigrants often leave the scene of a wreck to avoid being deported. Many of the vehicles used to transport illegal immigrants are stolen or rented, he added.

But American citizens may have their own reasons for fleeing: A driver may lack insurance, or be underage, intoxicated, committing a crime, or driving without a valid license.

"It's not just illegals," said James Frederikson, executive director of the Arizona Insurance Information Association, an industry-funded, nonprofit research group. "There are people out there with a history of irresponsible driving. … One of the things we know is that people who have their driver's license suspended continue to drive."

Transportation researchers estimate that 30 percent to 70 percent of people with suspended or revoked licenses still get behind the wheel. In Arizona, one-third of drivers identified in fatal hit-and-runs had either no license or an invalid one.

Alcohol surely plays a role in some hit-and-run accidents, but Arizona doesn't have an especially high rate of drunken-driving. In 2004, 19 percent of drivers in fatal crashes had a blood-alcohol concentration higher than the state's DUI level, but that rate is one percentage point below the U.S. average.

Arizona may, however, have a higher-than-average rate of uninsured motorists. Based on claims data from the mid-1990s, the Insurance Research Council estimated 16 percent of Arizona motorists were uninsured, ranking it 13th among the 50 states. The group, funded by insurers, hasn't yet updated its study with more recent data.

Although it's against the law to drive without insurance, poor people may opt to take their chances so they can feed their families, said Carolyn Gorman, vice president of the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group in New York.

"You have to remember there are a lot of poor people in this country who aren't Mexicans," she said.

Insurance might seem like a luxury, she said, "if you have no assets at risk and you're driving an old junker of a car."

Arizona's poverty rate from 2002 through 2004 was 14th among the 50 states, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Information about hit-and-run drivers may be spotty, but there are clear patterns to the crime.

Three-quarters of Arizona's fatal hit-and-run accidents happen when it's dark, nearly double the rate for other fatal crashes. Municipal streets account for 60 percent of fatal hit-and-run accidents, but 35 percent of other deadly crashes.

Preventing tragedies

Traffic safety experts say reducing hit-and-run crashes is difficult because many who commit the crime already have lost their license. Even seizing someone's vehicle might not work because they can go out and buy a cheap used car.

"One of the simplest countermeasures is to require that anyone purchasing a vehicle display a valid driver's license," said Willis of the Texas Transportation Institute.

That's not the law in Arizona. If it were, elderly and disabled people who don't have licenses couldn't buy vehicles for others to drive, said Cydney DeModica, spokeswoman for the state Motor Vehicle Division.

To reduce the number of unlicensed drivers, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety recommends authorities seize vehicles and license plates from offenders, establish mandatory jail time for repeat offenses and create better links between state databases of drivers and vehicles.

Combating drunken driving is another strategy for reducing hit-and-runs.

Others — like Bill Walton, whose son, Joe, died after being struck by a hit-and-run driver last year — favor toughening Arizona's penalties for fleeing the scene of a fatal accident.

● One family's pain: A year ago, the Walton family lost a son to a driver who thought she had hit only a shopping cart.

● at risk: Given their numbers in Arizona, Indians comprise an unusually large portion of those killed in hit-and-run crashes.

● we all pay: Insurers say hit-run accidents, along with other factors such as vehicle thefts, add to the cost of insurance in the state.